Everything is awesome this week, as Nathan and Clint go it alone to delight in the toyetic goodness of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part! Of course, every rose has its thorns, so we have to balance out the pure-strain awesomeness of that film with the horrifying grocery-store hijinks of the cinematic war crime that is 2012’s Foodfight! - a kid’s movie that features black dick jokes and callbacks to classic children’s flicks like Casablanca and Triumph of the Will! Listen to us talk about the cur...
Feb 13, 2019•1 hr 18 min
Grab some tiramisu and your favorite comic books, because for this Happy Cast we’re going spelunking down the deep, twisty well that is M. Night Shyamalan’s mind! Eric Szyszka of We Hate Movies returns once again to talk about the ego, ambition and incredible weirdness of Night’s work - whether he’s poorly deconstructing superhero movies or grossly mishandling the ecological disaster movie. Also, we take a look at another overly-confident, fascinating figure = Fyre Festival fraudster Billy McFar...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 24 min
Now that the joy of the new year has passed, and we’ve all forgotten our resolutions, it’s time for a Happy Cast that is decidedly less happy! This week, Nathan and Clint go for a double-dose of arthouse didacticism with indie provocateur Lars Von Trier. First, we break down the upsetting misanthropy of his latest, The House That Jack Built; then we take a trip back to 2006 to watch his computer-shot, computer-cut workplace comedy The Boss of It All. Then, for a nice change of pace we talk about...
Jan 16, 2019•1 hr 25 min
Happy Life Day, listeners! It’s 2019, so we thought we’d look back at that most hallowed of holidays, when the coke piled up like snow and Bruce Vilanch was allowed to touch the Star Wars universe! The Star Wars Holiday Special is an infamous piece of Star Wars ephemera, and we (along with returning guest Brock Wilbur of the X-Wingin’ It podcast) dig into its curious origins, the deeply perverse nature of its horny Wookiee sitcom shenanigans, and the intricate ceremonies of Life Day itself. Whil...
Jan 02, 2019•1 hr 8 min
🎵Happy Cast, Happy CastHas no deal with Conde NastStill we try, as we mightTo fill your earbuds with delightLook out!Here comes the Happy Cast!🎵 Howdy, true believers! For this friendly neighborhood episode of Happy Cast, we were thrilled to pull in Dan McCoy from the Flop House universe to talk about the surprisingly excellent Sony-produced(!) Spidey flick Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While we’re at it, we dug into another great animated superhero flick, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, an...
Dec 19, 2018•1 hr 25 min
Howdy, listeners! This week, we’re thrilled to bring on writer-director Adam Rifkin to talk about his latest film, The Last Movie Star, which features the wonderful final performance of Burt Reynolds. Among other things, we talk to him about what it was like to craft a script for a movie icon and deal with the man’s legacy. Before that, though, Nathan and Clint pull double duty by looking at the best and worst of the Coen brothers’ output: Netflix’s stunning The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the ...
Dec 04, 2018•1 hr 35 min
Ho-ho-ho, listeners! We’re celebrating Christmas in mid-November over on Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast, as we get a sneak peek at the Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles, starring Kurt Russell as a Santa Who Fucks. Friend of the show and Christmas film extraordinaire Alonso Duralde (The Wrap, Linoleum Knife) climbs down our chimney to talk about Minion-y murder elves, pernicious Chicago racism, and all that wonderful yuletide stuff! Along with that, we take a look at Santa’s Summer House, the micro-b...
Nov 20, 2018•1 hr 34 min
(Note: we didn’t even realize when recording that this is the one-year anniversary of Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast! Thanks so much to everybody who listens, comments, likes, pledges, and subscribes. Here’s to another year o’ laffs!) This week, Nathan and Clint continue their tradition of talking about weird month-old releases by diving into the superhero madness of Tom Hardy’s Venom! We also look at the similarly strange early-aughts Halle Berry misfire Catwoman, the dizzying tale of a woman who ga...
Nov 06, 2018•1 hr 20 min
Happy Halloween, ghouls and goblins! For our spook-tacular horror-themed episode of Happy Cast, we bring on 80s horror movie maverick Scott Weinberg (80s All Over) to take some evil, dark acid and wield overly-long chainsaws as we discuss the psychedelic Nic Cage slaughterfest Mandy! Also, we bow to the whims of our Patrons and talk about the one-off anthology horror film Halloween III - Season of the Witch, and chat a bit about which horror remakes/reboots work, and when they work, and why! Str...
Oct 23, 2018•1 hr 44 min
Oh hai, Happy Casters! For this latest episode of Happy Cast, Nathan and Clint are thrilled to bring on Greg Sestero of The Room fame to talk Tommy Wiseau, contending with cult fame, and re-contextualizing their friendship in the form of their ambitious new collaboration Best F(r)iends! Of course, we’ve also got some bigger fish to fry - Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga team up for A Star is Born, the ultimate Oscar-bait film that’s (to our surprise) is a lot better than its auteur marketing may sug...
Oct 10, 2018•1 hr 31 min
This week, Nathan and Clint are two ugly motherfuckers trying to catch some prey in an unforgiving world, as we talk about two different entries in the Predator franchise! First, we break down what Clint hated (and Nathan found not so bad) about Shane Black’s latest, messiest entry in the series. Then, we take a time warp back to the far-flung future of 1997 Los Angeles for the deeply racist, yet shockingly entertaining Predator 2! From there, we finally hash out the question that has plagued th...
Sep 25, 2018•1 hr 32 min
It’s early September, which means late-summer/early-fall stinkers at the multiplex and the anniversary of 9/11. Lucky, for you, the latest Happy Cast has both! In this episode, Nathan and Clint return from the latter’s wedding to talk about Jennifer Garner’s perplexing, unbelievably racist comeback film Peppermint, along with 1995’s Fair Game, that other adaptation of the Paula Gosling novel besides Cobra. Cindy Crawford’s in it! We also take a knee and honor 9/11 by talking about the ways it’s ...
Sep 11, 2018•1 hr 22 min
This week, Nathan and Clint follow Tracy Jordan's credo of "live every week like it's Shark Week" by talking about two toothsome shark movies - Jason Statham's cheese-fest The Meg and the film that bought Michael Caine a very nice house, Jaws: The Revenge. Along the way, we catch up to the James Gunn scandal and the bad faith actors of the alt right, answer some mailbags and recommend some pods! Put on your shark-fin hats, slap in your earbuds, and enjoy. 4:49 - Scalding Hot Takes: The Meg 27:05...
Aug 28, 2018•1 hr 16 min
This week, we get down with the swing-for-the-fences joints of Spike Lee! Film critic extraordinaire Amy Nicholson (of the podcasts The Canon and Unspooled) joins us to talk about his latest, BlacKkKlansman, and her experiences attending her first Phish show. Meantime, we go it alone to answer the clarion call of our Patrons, as we suffer through nearly two and a half hours of ham-fisted social commentary and not-so-subtle misogyny with Lee's 2004 misfire She Hate Me! (You know, the one where Fa...
Aug 14, 2018•1 hr 28 min
This week, we're dangling off helicopters and running at full speed, desperately trying to catch up to Tom Cruise's tiny, ageless form in Mission Impossible: Fallout. Also, we look back at a younger, Chiclet-toothed Tom Cruise as the elfen lead in Ridley Scott's Lisa Frank-esque fantasy picture Legend. Along the way, we make Mad Libs out of press releases for the band Florida Georgia Line, discuss the James Gunn outrage, and lament the impending collapse of paid culture criticism! 7:15 - Scaldin...
Aug 01, 2018•1 hr 35 min
Nathan and Clint go it alone for the latest Happy Cast, as we celebrate the Paul Ruddnaissance with a long-overdue discussion of Marvel's latest cog in the cinematic universe machine, Ant-Man and the Wasp! Plus, we talk about the mid-aughts Rudd rom-com Over Her Dead Body, discuss the superhero sequels that are actually better than their originals, and figure out which films we'd recast with the Muppets. 5:08 - Scalding Hot Takes: Ant-Man and the Wasp 24:36 - Control Nathan and Clint: Over Her D...
Jul 17, 2018•1 hr 19 min
In our ongoing quest to talk to two out of three members of our favorite podcasts, this week's episode of Happy Cast sees us bringing on We Hate Movies superstar Andrew Jupin! Together, the three of us talk about the shockingly charming feature-length Pepsi commercial Uncle Drew, and thrill at the obviously impeccable rap stylings of Shaquille O'Neal in Kazaam. After that, we get a little mushy with some wonderfully sentimental thoughts on movies that touched us in those squishy emotional places...
Jul 06, 2018•1 hr 35 min
This episode of Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast is exclusively for the kiddies, as we bring on pop culture wunderkind and friend of the show Charles Bramesco (The Guardian, Vulture, et al.) to talk about the many efforts of films both Pixar and Pixar-adjacent! First, we squeeze into some tight spandex and discuss the surprising joys of Incredibles 2; then, we curl into a collective ball and weep at the masterful Inside Out. After that we get a little more downbeat, with a curious look at the what-if-p...
Jun 20, 2018•1 hr 31 min
addle up, guys and ghouls, because it's another episode of Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast! This episode, Nathan and Clint skip Solo: A Star Wars Story to talk about a smaller film with a bigger body count - Leigh Whannell's 80s-tinged cyberpunk action flick Upgrade. Don't worry, we still get some Donald Glover chat in with the cult Derrick Comedy comedy Mystery Team, while we succumb to the evil whims of our Patrons by watching the dreadful James Wan ventriloquist-dummy horror film Dead Silence. Plus...
Jun 05, 2018•1 hr 15 min
It's time to make the chimichangas this week, as we're joined by special guest Dan McCoy of The Flop House podcast to talk the many faces of that droll mischief maker Ryan Reynolds! From his latest hit, Deadpool 2, to his cult role as cool-guy-waiter/pederast in Waiting..., our favorite Guy With a Pizza Place just won't stop the yuks! Along the way, we also dig into the glam glee of the Dino de Laurentiis-produced Flash Gordon movie from the 80s, and take that other bold truth-teller Ricky Gerva...
May 23, 2018•1 hr 30 min
This week on Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast, we go it alone to sample from the vast buffet of superhero movies through the ages! First, we jabber about the TV season finale of movies, Marvels Avengers: Infinity War; then, we jam out to the slick 70s musical stylings and surprising emotional weight of intergalactic hangout movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; then, you sadists make us sit through the execrable half-hearted comedy of Richard Lester's Superman III. Not only that, we have a hard talk ab...
May 08, 2018•1 hr 23 min
Howdy, Happy Placers! To celebrate our six-month anniversary of Happy Cast (and the one-year anniversary of Happy Place), Nathan and Clint bring on friend and collaborator Brock Wilbur - the man who brought ethics to video game journalism himself! Together, we talk about two disastrous video game movies: the Rock-tastic disaster porn tentpole Rampage and, as per the wishes of our mighty Patrons, the 1994 high-kicking dystopia Double Dragon. Along the way, we grill Brock about the latest happenin...
Apr 24, 2018•1 hr 36 min
Strap on your nostalgia goggles and assemble your Funko Pops, it's another episode of Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast! This episode, Nathan and Clint peer through the rose-colored VR glasses of Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, desperately dig deep into the fractured cult psyche of Neil Breen's Pass Thru, and try to kick the habit of the '80s anti-drug crossover cartoon Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. Meanwhile, Josh Fruhlinger (the Comics Curmudgeon himself) joins the party to wax poetic about th...
Apr 10, 2018•1 hr 59 min
The monkey business never stops on Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast, as Nathan and Clint go ape for the second movie where Clint Eastwood drinks with a pet orangutan, 1980's Any Which Way You Can! Along the way, we pick up a friend - We Hate Movies' Eric Szyszka - to talk about ape torture, overly sexualized Ruth Gordons, and the erotic power of a good '70s mustache. That's not all: Nathan and Clint break down the dire direct-to-Netflix action comedy Game Over, Man!; gush over the cult 80s film that ce...
Mar 27, 2018•1 hr 41 min
We're going ape on Happy Cast this week, as Stinker Lets Loose! author Mike Sacks joins us for a triple feature of monkey mayhem - Clint Eastwood's cult trucker/monkey saga Every Which Way But Loose, the execrable Golan-Globus comedy Going Bananas, and a deep dive into the legacy of Stinker Lets Loose! and the nature of novelizations. But first, Nathan and Clint go on an angry deep dive into Eli Roth's angry, lazy retread of Death Wish, starring an increasingly turtle-esque Bruce Willis! 2:16 - ...
Mar 13, 2018•1 hr 25 min
Greetings, all you ghosties and ghouls! For this special pod-AGHAST of Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast, we're de-FRIGHT-ed to welcome the one and only Elliott Kalan of The Flop House, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return and The Daily Show with John Stewart! In this special hour-long segment, we bite into the bilious bag of bile that is the last three episodes of Tales from the Crypt's first season - "Only Sin Deep," "Lover Come Hack to Me," and "Collection Completed." Before that, though, Nathan ...
Feb 27, 2018•2 hr
It's amore over on Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast, as Nathan and Clint light some candles, put on some slow jams, and suffer through some of the hokiest, most hackneyed romantic media the world has to offer! We break down the mysterious appeal of the kink-confused Fifty Shades film franchise, show we're not 'fraid of no ghosts with the bizarre Nicholas Sparks adaptation Safe Haven, and discuss the complicated sex life of the former Mrs. Li'L Wayne, Karrine "Superhead" Steffans in her memoir, How to M...
Feb 13, 2018•1 hr 17 min
The latest episode of Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast drops today! This time around, we celebrate the highs of Peak Nicolas Cage with Mom and Dad, the lows of M. Night Shyamalan with The Last Airbender, and the no-respect doldrums of Rodney Dangerfield's kid-focused efforts ("Where's Rodney?", Rover Dangerfield). Also, we dig into just what's going on with that lovable scamp Donald Trump! Not to speak out of turn, but that rascal seems up to no good. 4:17 - Scalding Hot Takes: Mom and Dad 21:06 - Cont...
Jan 30, 2018•1 hr 31 min
This week on the Cast, Clint and Nathan get through the January blues with Liam Neeson's punch-throwing insurance salesman in The Commuter, gush about the filmmaking mastery of Edgar Wright's Baby Driver, and celebrate the highs and lows of Rodney Dangerfield's career with his final film Angels with Angles and hit comedy album No Respect. Enjoy! 2:00 - Scalding Hot Takes: The Commuter 23:53 - Lukewarm Takes: Baby Driver 42:34 - Control Nathan and Clint: Angels with Angles 1:00:14 - Great Moments...
Jan 16, 2018•1 hr 15 min
Happy New Year! We're live in-studio once more at Clint's palatial podcast laboratory, with the ever-adorable Declan Haven Dilla Rabin as our special guest. To usher in 2018, we kvetch about everything from the toxic one-two punch of David Ayer's recent film output (Bright and Suicide Squad); reminisce about the heady days of Shia Labeouf's rise to stardom with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; celebrate Steven Seagal's bafflingly hateful alt-right screen The Way of the Shadow ...
Jan 03, 2018•1 hr 24 min
